no longer addicted to facecrack

saturday was a monumental day in melbourne. the hawks won, cleo didn’t wake us at 5am and most importantly, i finally gave up facebook for good. i’d planned to deactivate on the first goal of the grand final, but i was actually looking forward to sticking it to zuckerberg so much i ended up flicking the switch in the freezer aisle at the supermarket. it felt good. it still feels good.

this isn’t the first time i’ve done this. i’ve probably deactivated facecrack 3-4 times in the last 4 years, but always i’ve gone crawling back after a week or so. it’s only been three days but already it feels like this is the final time, and there’ll be no more shame stalking the photos of old school friends at 2am when most people won’t know i’ve reneged on my promise to rid myself of the evil clutches of data nerds in the usa. i feel like a smoker who’s had my last cigarette and completely turned the corner: it seems silly to compare facestalk to other addictions, but the saddest part of the whole sorry situation is that it’s probably truer than we care to admit. i’ve struggled to let go before. ‘why’ is beyond me: there’s not much to take from it, most people either share other posts or say nothing of value, it’s full of advertising, and at the end of the day the only person who stands to gain anything from it is the billionaire in california who thinks it’s perfectly fine to take your information and sell it to others for a profit. there’s not a lot of use for personal users in it anymore, and it’s really just a tool for businesses. i’ve done enough literature reviews on data and information security to know that they will just keep taking everything they can from you and unless you know exactly how to hide it, prevention is futile. i did a study on under 13 age restriction on facebook last year and surveyed random people about their views on kids using social media: not a single person was concerned about data security of children online. the less people think about it, the more they get away with. my email inbox is filling up with junkmail from companies i have never heard of, bought from or subscribed to. you have to ask how they get your details (do you though? really?). zuckerberg is the used car salesman of privacy and he’s not messing with mine anymore!

i’ll leave you with one of my favourite scenes from the i.t. crowd: they seemed to sum it up best…. FOUR YEARS AGO.